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Alien vs Predator
What type of wine do you serve with crow? I'm asking because I'm about to eat a little. See, I have a friend who's been telling me for the past two years that Alien vs. Predator is a perfectly enjoyable piece of non-think entertainment. I have in turn been telling him that he's completely lost his mind. I pretty much loathed this movie the first time I saw it, and while I wasn't quite ready to crucify director Paul W.S. Anderson, I did take more than a few cheap shots at him. But now that I've seen the movie a second time, I'm backing off a bit from some of my previous statements, and I'm willing to accept whatever the consequences may be.
After a satellite owned by billionaire industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) detects a strange heat signature in Antarctica, he assembles a team of experts, including climber extraordinaire Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), to accompany him to the site and investigate the anomaly. Along the way he reveals that a pyramid of unknown origin has been discovered at the site, buried beneath several hundred feet of ice. Once inside the pyramid the team discovers relics of several ancient human civilizations, as well as evidence of ritual sacrifices. What they don't know is that an Alien queen is imprisoned in the bowels of the structure. After being kept in hibernation for the past hundred years, the queen has been brought out of her slumber in order to spawn warrior Aliens, which will in turn be hunted by three Predators who have come to Earth to engage in one of their species' rites of passage. After they realize they've been lured to the pyramid to serve as hosts for the Aliens, Alexa and her companions desperately struggle to make it back to the surface. Meanwhile, the three young Predators begin their hunt.
I'm not sure why I reacted so negatively to this movie the first time I saw it. I have no special affinity for either franchise, so I certainly didn't feel my childhood was being raped (a stupid notion if I ever heard one). I didn't resent the fact that Anderson, rather than say Ridley Scott or James Cameron, was helming the flick. (Unlike some, I don't view Anderson as England's answer to Uwe Boll; unlike Boll, Anderson shows some competence behind the camera, and could probably turn out a very good flick if he could get his hands on a solid script.) And I'd like to think I didn't go in with my mind already made up, having been unduly influenced by the backlash the movie received during its theatrical run, but I guess that is a possibility. Maybe I was just having a bad day. Whatever the reason, I came away wish no desire to see the movie again. After having finally caved to pressure and given the movie a second chance, I now agree that it is a perfectly enjoyable piece of non-think entertainment (until the last few minutes, that is, but we'll get to that in a minute). If you can turn your brain completely (and I mean completely) off, it's not a bad ride. It's nothing more than an excuse to kill a bunch of stock characters and stage a bunch of fights between two of modern cinema's more iconic monsters, but it knows what it is and makes no bones about it. It doesn't quite deliver on its promise (it's not violent, gory or unhinged enough to be totally successful on a visceral level), but it's certainly not the unmitigated disaster many people have made it out to be. (Of course, Anderson could have come up with the greatest thing since legalized birth control and he still would have been raked over the coals by a certain segment of the population.) Hell, I'd even go so far as to say AVP is a damn sight better than Alien: Resurrection, which to me is a textbook example of how even a truly gifted director can churn out a truly horrible film. Sure, they're not going to be teaching this thing in film schools anytime soon, but you could definitely find worse ways to kill two hours.
I think Anderson's one major misstep comes during the movie's climax, when he suddenly has Lathan morph into an action hero. Try hard enough and it's possible not to compare Lathan to Sigourney Weaver, at least for the first eighty minutes or so. But Anderson can't seem to resist the temptation to have her start kicking ass out of nowhere, at which point it becomes almost impossible not to make the comparison. Needless to say, that's a battle Lathan has no chance of winning. She simply can't compete, as an actress or as an action hero. (In Lathan's defense, she's been perfectly fine in other movies. I think she's just out of her element here.) On top of this, there's nothing about Alexa that leads you to believe she could go head-to-head with either or these species. Yes, she's tough, smart and resourceful, but that doesn't make her a warrior. Whereas Ripley went through an arc over the course of two films, Alexa simply changes in the blink of an eye. It would be impossible to accept the Ripley of Aliens if we hadn't seen what she had experienced in the first movie. Sure, she single-handedly dispatches the creature at the end of the Alien, but her actions there are a mixture of resolve and desperation. Had she instead been given a pulse rifle and gone tear-assing through the ship, blowing everything to hell, it wouldn't have worked. That works at the end of Aliens because she's evolved in a believable manner, making the climax both crowd-pleasing and a logical extension of the character. Unfortunately for Anderson, his ending is neither.
Despite my change of heart, I still have a few questions. I find it odd that Anderson has Alexa mention that the water surrounding Antarctica will kill you in a matter of minutes, but later has her running around in the cold with pretty much only a fleece top for protection. Seems odd to go out of your to call attention to the deadly cold and then chuck that notion out the window altogether. How is it that no one notices that big freakin' laser beam the Predators use to carve a hole down to the pyramid? I wasn't expecting a scene showing the guys at NORAD all abuzz over the flash, but you'd think someone on the damn icebreaker would have seen it (having Weyland see it but still carry on would have helped add more shading to the character). Why is it that the Predators' wrist blades can be damaged by the Aliens' acid, yet their disc weapons don't seem to be affected in the least? If they've developed a substance that's impervious to the acid, why not use it for all of their weapons? And given what we learn here, you have to wonder exactly what the Predators from the previous movies were doing on Earth. Were those two just a couple of tools out looking for some easy prey? Were they stopping by to make sure there were still plenty of human hosts? Were they stopping by to make sure the pipes hadn't frozen and burst? Am I reading too much into this? Yeah, probably.
Despite the fact that Fox released a Director's Cut of this movie a little over a year ago, what you'll find here is the theatrical cut and the slightly longer version that was included on the first DVD release. In what appears to be something of a first for Blu-ray, the two cuts are available via seamless branching. I had assumed each cut would be given its own layer, but there's a distinct layer change (one of those old school, stop-the-movie-cold layer changes) about an hour in.
The DVD
The only flaw I could find in the 2.35:1 transfer (encoded with MPEG2 at a rate of 18 Mbps) was a bit of noise in a shot or two during the climax. It's nothing major, but it's enough to lower the rating just a hair. Aside from that, everything is aces. Colors, from the green Predator blood on down to the yellows of the Aliens' acid, are spot-on, flesh tones are perfect, the blacks (which are plentiful) are deep, and the level of detail is very impressive (take a look at the zipper on Lathan's coat; every bright red tooth is clearly delineated against the more muted red of the coat itself).
The movie gets the soundtrack it deserves, which means it's loud and quite active. The DTS HD 5.1 Master Audio track is front-heavy during the opening scenes, but things really let loose once the action starts. Bass is deep and tight, and the surrounds are well integrated. Dialogue is always clear and intelligible. Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included, as are English and Spanish subtitle options.
Fox has seen fit to carry over the commentaries from the previous releases. These are available for the theatrical version only.
The first track features Director Paul W.S. Anderson and Actors Lance Henriksen and Sanaa Lathan. This one balances production info with comments regarding the story and characters (insert your own joke here). Much like the movie itself, it's not a great experience, but it serves its purpose.
The second commentary features Visual Effects Supervisor John Bruno and Creature Effects Designers/Creators Alec Gillis and Tom Woodroof, Jr. This track is, not unexpectedly, far more technical, and I found it the more enjoyable of the two. These guys know their stuff, and the information they share is quite interesting.
You also get another of Fox's Trivia Tracks. This one, which is designed as a transmission between a pair of scientists sometime in the future, provides information regarding the Predator and Alien cultures. Too bad it's so damn hard to read.
The disc is also enhanced for use with D-Box Motion Control Systems. I'm not lucky enough to own one of those fancy contraptions, so I can't attest to its effectiveness.
Closing things out is the movie's theatrical trailer.
Final Thoughts:
I know what I hate, and I don't hate this movie. Had Fox included the Director's Cut and at least a few more of the extras found on the previous releases, I wouldn't have any qualms recommending a purchase. But the nagging suspicion we'll see a double-dip down the road is causing me to err on the side of caution, so I say give this one a rental.
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I started a new unit in Geometry- Parallel and Perpendicular Lines. I started with a card sort. I numbered the back of the page going across 1-12. Then I copied each page on a different color of card stock and cut those in half. I passed it out to the students and had them cut out the individual squares. (Yay for student labor!) Unfortunately, when they cut, the numbers were cut in half which posed some problems. Maybe you should have students number them after they cut? Not sure what happened on my end.
I asked students to sort into groups. Some students sorted the ones with fractions, parentheses, and neither. I'm sure you will see a wide variation. The first hint I gave was that students should have three groups. They resorted and I went back around the room to observe. Next, I told them they would have one group of six and two groups of three. From here, almost everyone had their cards in the correct group.
I displayed this slide to make sure everyone had the correct groups.
A few students recognized that the one group of six were in slope-intercept form. Yay for Algebra I. I asked them to put those six cards back into their envelope. Then I passed out this worksheet and asked students to write in the equations on the cards onto the worksheet and solve for y. They did okay at this. After they were done I told them to get the six back out of the envelope because these were the answers to the top of their worksheet. See what I did there?
From there we went to the bottom half of the worksheet which was graphing lines on the calculator. Then on the back we worked down each column individually. We solved a pair of equations for y. We graphed. We noticed both lines were parallel. We compared the equations. Oh my, they have the same slope! We did this three times and summarized that all parallel lines must have the same slope.


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Mozzarella di bufala and olive pizza
We finally got our hands on some mozzarella di bufala when we visited a Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor, MI this last weekend. The olives were yummy as well and from the "olive bar" at WFM. Can't wait to make these in the new brick oven!
This one is just a variation, with pesto as the sauce instead.


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The Walker Park Neighborhood Master Plan, adopted in February 2008, was the first neighborhood plan completed after City Plan 2025 was adopted.
View what developments are being made in the Wedington Corridor.
The Fayette Junction Master Plan was the second complete neighborhood plan, adopted in the Spring of 2009, as a part of City Plan 2025.


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2016 Election: | Hillary's book | Trump's book | Bernie's book | Ted Cruz's book | | | 2016 Senate Debates |
A Nation of Immigrants, by John F. Kennedy (Click for Amazon book review)
OnTheIssues.org BOOK REVIEW: This book should be read by every politician involved in the immigration debate, and by every citizen interested in the current immigration debate -- which means it should be read by every American. It is shocking how little has changed in the 50 years since President Kennedy wrote this book. He wrote it to push for pro-immigration reforms in 1963 -- but the same arguments apply today as applied then. Kennedy cites detailed historical evidence to back his case -- the sort of evidence that immigration opponents routinely ignore. Kennedy's key lesson for today -- which was the same lesson he offered in 1963 -- is the old adage, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it." Kennedy's core argument is that Americans are all immigrants -- and therefore excluding certain immigrants from certain nations is nothing more than racism. Kennedy explicitly cites Mexicans as targets of such racial preferences -- it's hard to believe that the same issue is still here 50 years later. Some things have improved -- Eastern Europeans are no longer limited as they were until the 1960s; and Asians are no longer entirely excluded as they were until 1952 (p. 45). But for Mexicans, evidently opponents demonized them as much in the 1960 election as in the 2012 election. Kennedy addresses just about all of the arguments that opponents today still cite. For decades following the 1880s, Kennedy cites, Italians immigrated to America by the millions for purely economic reasons -- which today is the key factor cited in why we should limit Mexican immigration. Irish immigrants were bashed as mercilessly in the 1920s as Hispanics are bashed today. Kennedy cites the "Know-Nothing Party," which was formed to fight Irish immigration, as evidence of unique hatred of the Irish, since they are the only group to have inspired a political party against them. Kennedy might cite today's Tea Party as the second instance, formed in large part to fight Mexican immigration. Members of the Tea Party with Irish and Italian backgrounds might read those chapters on how their ancestors were discriminated against, before they bash Mexican immigration as harmful to America. Kennedy cites (pp. 37-40) the first argument made in Congress to stop immigration -- in 1797 (no, that's not a typographical error; that would be on the floor of the United States House of Representatives during the 4th Congress; but the same argument is made in the 112th Congress today). The white male property-owning Anglo Saxon Protestant members of the 4th Congress lost their argument to exclude non-white, non-property-owning, non-Anglo Saxon, non-Protestants in 1797. Because they lost that argument in 1797 and in the two centuries since, we've come a long way -- but we all need to read about our own history to see why they SHOULD have lost then, and why the same arguments SHOULD lose again today, and tomorrow, and for the next two centuries. -- Jesse Gordon, editor-in-chief, OnTheIssues.org, July 2012
by John F. Kennedy.
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I use them for "Chip Clips", to keep bags of potato chips closed. They are better than the cheap plastic ones.
I like finding different uses for everyday household items and office supplies. Not only does it save me money, it also keeps my mind working overtime. "What can I do with these?" runs around my head way too often, sometimes to the point where I'm sketching out ideas for used pens or old boxes.
A recent trip to Office Depot had me picking up a box of binder clips that were on special. I went with the intention of getting these clips for a specific purpose (the mundane use of holding documents together) but what else could I do with them? Here's what I discovered after some brainwaves and a little Internet searching:
Hey, it's not something a respectable Mafia boss would carry, but if you're just looking for a cheap and efficient way to keep your bills in one place, this isn't too shabby.
If you're like me, you have cables galore around your desk. Sort them out with a few binder clips. Mix up the colors or even paint the boring black ones to match your décor.
When my kids were using pacifiers, we would see them get spit out and hit the floor more often than we could count. So we bought some special pacifier holders that clipped to the clothing of our little ones. But there's a cheaper solution: Tie a piece of string around the pacifier, tie the other end to the small binder clip, and then attach somewhere out of reach. No more soiled pacifiers covered in dirt and fluff.
They're not as cheap as clothespins, but if you're in a pinch and have none left, substituting with binder clips will easily do the job.
We use binder clips in the advertising business to make clothes appear more tailored in photoshoots. If you've seen Lost in Translation, you'll know the scene where Bill Murray goes out and about after a shoot and has binder clips all over the back of his suit. You can use them to hold up cuffs on jeans or shirt sleeves, or even use smaller ones as temporary fixes on ripped seams. I also use binder clips to hold the end of a flapping belt to the side of my jeans.
The hipster in you will love this one. Grab yourself some all-steel or gold-colored binder clips and make a cool fashion statement that costs just pennies.
Keep a binder clip at the bottom of the new toothpaste tube and use it to keep the rolled up tube in place. You'll make the toothpaste last longer.
Grab a handful of blank pages (I use construction paper), and hold them together with a binder clip and a sheet of thick cardstock for sturdiness. Now tie a pen or pencil to a piece of string and tie that to the binder clip: a simple doodle pad that always has a pen attached.
Running out of space? Use binder clips to keep shoes together, and hang them out of the way using the binder clips.
A little ingenuity and some trial-and-error will give you a cell phone or iPod stand that works just as well as those costing $10 or more.
Better to use a small binder clip than to dog-ear your precious pages.
Start small and work up to bigger and bigger binder clips. This is particularly good for guitar players who need to strengthen their smaller fingers.
When we have parties for our kids, the first thing we buy is a plastic table cloth. But being plastic, it wants to slip straight off the table. Keep it in place (and your table protected) by using a binder clip or two on each side of the table.
People spend small fortunes on fancy desk toys. Why not use your imagination and save money? Create small sculptures out of the stack of binder clips you have on the desk. Challenge other people in the office to make something fun.
If you have one of those fridges with wire shelves, this one's for you. By placing a binder clip in the appropriate place on the shelf, you can butt beers up against it and create a pyramid of beers that saves space (or allows room for more beers).
It looks like a purse already. Why not decorate it and go all the way?
A couple of pieces of glass or clear plastic and three or four binder clips makes an inexpensive and minimal photo frame. It's easy to change out the photos or artwork, too.
Create a simple art display for your kids (or your own work) by running a length of string or cord along the wall. Now attach binder clips to the string and place the art in the binders. It's easy to swap out work and a great way to show off the fruits of your labor.
If you've got stacks of extension cords, wires, and cables in your garage, they can often get tangled and knotted together. Keep them in their own spools by using a couple of large binder clips. They're easy to remove and replace and will stop the untidy mess of wires on your garage floor.
Here's some information I got from Lifehacker on how to make new feet for your keyboard. It's also handy for adjusting the height and angle of the keyboard. Or, just prop it up with the binder clips for a more speedy solution:
Push the rods in the binder clip inwards to release it from the clip. Take the pliers and bend the tip of the rod to straighten it. Repeat with the other side so you have two. For added friction on the table to prevent sliding, tightly wrap a rubber band at the base of each rod or whatever rubbery material you can find. The last step is to simply insert the ends of the rods into two available screw holes at the back of your keyboard if available, and there you go! Use different size binder clips for desired angle/height.
Binder clips can be used as earrings, jewelry, or even body modification.
Always have a binder clip handy by attaching your keys to it. It also makes it easy to hang your keys.
Every professional or semi-professional photographer I know has a stack of binder clips handy. They're great for keeping backgrounds in place, keeping cords out of the way, and can be used to assemble temporary light boxes.
Another tip gleaned from Lifehacker:
Put the duvet in the cover one corner at a time, securing each corner with a large binder clip. Spread the combined cover and duvet on the bed. Reach the center underneath and lift; hold it over your head with your hands and let the sides fall around you. Shake the duvet so that the sides fall to the sides of the cover. Spread the duvet on the bed and give the final touches. Remove the binder clips.
Create an interlocking circle of binder clips. The holes within each binder clip, plus the larger hole in the center, make ideal storage for pens, pencils and other office supplies. And when you're done with it, it breaks down easily.
As a tea drinker, I often come across tea bags that have no string. It's not a big deal; I fish it out with a spoon. But now there's an alternative: Hold the bag in place on the side of the cup using a binder clip. When your tea is steeped to your satisfaction, remove the clip and dump the bag.
Many of you will already carry an ID badge to the office. They usually come with a small crocodile clip, but that can soon break. If it does, attach the badge to a binder clip and you've got an instant replacement that's every bit as strong.
I can't vouch for the comfort of this one, but it's certainly original.
For more binder clip ideas, check out Myscha's article "Cool Ideas for Clothespins and Binder Clips."
Any more binder clip ideas? Let us know.
Disclaimer: The links and mentions on this site may be affiliate links. But they do not affect the actual opinions and recommendations of the authors.
Wise Bread is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
I use them for "Chip Clips", to keep bags of potato chips closed. They are better than the cheap plastic ones.
My favorite use, as a chip bag holder or to close a bag of sugar or coffee or anything else that's open!
Binder clips are ideal for biking in a dress. Just clip the skirt together like pants! I explain it here on my blog: http://hotchallah.tumblr.com/post/6758470888/are-you-aware-of-it-how-to-...


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HowTo:Be a hipster
This article may be Overly American. Brits may not understand humor, only humour. Canadians and Australians may not understand anything at all. Don't not attempt to remedy this. |
HowTo This article is part of Uncyclopedia's HowTo series. See more HowTos |
"I went through every possible scene you could imagine: mallgoth, emo, scenester, mallgoth revival... it was all so childish. But now I've really found myself as an individual in this world, and that's why I listen to mostly depressing lo-fi indie rock. I'm also a vegan, an- oh! Do you like my new leather shoes? I bought them somewhere. It doesn't matter where. You wouldn't know where it was, anyway."
Are you tired of being hopelessly mainstream? Have you just realized that all punk rock bands are pretty much playing the same song? Is the ecstasy-induced merriment of raving starting to get dull? Did you fall for the "What did you think of Joy Division's third album?" trick again while you were trying to bang that cute chick who hangs around the snooty independent record store with a world-weary expression on her face?
Well, your troubles are over, for within this article you will find everything you need to enter that most elite of music-based cliques: the hipsters! Yes, by following the directions on this article, and soon you'll be on your way to earning the right to bitch about the recording industry for hours with other twentysomethings who shop for their clothing at thrift stores. At the highest levels of Hipsterdom, you can even force people to listen to Yoko Ono and pretend to find aesthetic qualities in her work.[1] So what are you waiting for? Standardized nonconformity awaits!
(Oh, and before we start, you should know that the cute girl is a confirmed lesbian.)
Choose your opinions
First, you'll need some opinions. Not on politics — that doesn't matter.[2] No, you need opinions about music. And no, you do not need your own opinions about music. It doesn't matter what you think (unless you happen to be a college DJ, see below). Your opinions are derived from the hipster bible: Pitchfork Media.
Luckily, we've compiled all of the pressing issues in hipsterdom today. Simply answer the following questions:
Major labels are always bad. It doesn't matter how entertaining an artist's previous work may have been — everything they release for a major label sucks. End of story.
- Is [insert musical artist or group here] overrated/underrated?
- Has [insert semi-popular indie band that moved to a major label] sold out?
- Why does mainstream music suck so much?
- I mean, sure, mainstream music always sucks, but does it really have to suck that much?
- Hip-hop: Yes or No?
- What about underground hip-hop?
- Did you hear the new Yo La Tengo album?
Please note that it does not actually matter how you answer these questions, as long as you are willing to defend those answers in long, tedious debates with other hipsters.
As a novice hipster, you will likely be hearing several new names while you're hanging out at your local independent record store, like Belle & Sebastian, Gil Scott-Heron, Cap'n Jazz, Explosions In the Sky or Joanna Newsom. And, just as likely, you won't be able to buy all of the essential "cool" albums.[3] Sure, you could just download them illegally like everyone else, but in this case you'd be taking money from honest, hardworking independent artists[4] instead of the evil major labels, which means you run the risk of having to deal with excessive guilt, like the guilt one feels when you have to admit that you don't see why everyone is fussing over Arcade Fire;[5] this is a feeling that you want to avoid at all costs. You'll still be downloading most of your albums, but you are also required to pay lip service to legality. Buying at least one album every two months should do the trick, but make sure you do so at the independent record store where your fellow hipsters can witness your awesome display of coolness.
Irony: the hipster's best friend
Unfortunately, not everybody has a perfect music collection — we all have fossils of our pre-hipster years that continually come back to haunt us, threatening to destroy the coolness that we've spent so much time cultivating. Fortunately, as a hipster, you have access to the most useful fix-all in the universe: irony.
Worst-case scenario
Suppose you listen to Journey. Not just because that's what your stuck-in-the-eighties friends play on their stereos, or because you really like the movie Caddyshack, but because you actually enjoy the band's overproduced, studio-heavy sound and the hyperdramatic vocal stylings of Steve Perry.[6] Were you a member of a standard music-based subculture (for example, a metalhead), you would no doubt be cowering in fear lest your awful secret be found, hiding your autographed copy of Evolution in the closet and directing the attention of anyone who may enter your room to your fine collection of Cannibal Corpse CDs. Yet this would never be enough, because there is always the risk that one of your purer brethren may catch you humming "Wheel in the Sky" under your breath between sets at Ozzfest.[7]
However, for the hipster, there is nothing to be ashamed of in liking utter dreck, for, unlike lesser mortals, hipsters are allowed to like bad music. In fact, they are allowed to brag about the dozens of musical travesties in their extensive collection of LP's,[8] and even play them for their fellow hipsters. There are even a few persons in the movement who insist that one can't be a hipster unless you listen to crud. They can do this because, as hipsters, they have learned how to listen to music in an ironic fashion. In other words, it's okay to like crappy music, as long as you acknowledge that it's crappy and claim to enjoy it for its crappiness.
So go ahead — file that copy of Frontiers in your crate of LPs, right next to Joy Division, and put that life-size Neal Schon poster on the ceiling over your bed. It's so ironically hip!
Memorize obscure musical trivia
If you know more useless crap about the Ramones than someone who claims to be a punk, you are are officially allowed to "out" him or her as a "poser."
The memorization of musical trivia is arguably the most important part of the hipster lifestyle. As everyone knows, the only people who go into minutae about a particular artist or group are pathetic fanboys and crazy stalkers, because "normal" people actually have a social life. Paradoxically, however, if you know everything about every artist, then you are considered to be a well-adjusted human being who simply likes music a lot. Obviously, you want to be seen as a well-adjusted human being, as this will enable you to look down your nose at the fanboys and stalkers.
Part 1: Every artist you've ever heard of
To that end, you should spend several hours each day scouring the Internet for information on every musical act you've ever heard of. No detail is too insignificant; you never know when your knowledge that Trent Reznor's house in New Orleans was a former funeral home right across the street from Anne Rice's house could be the "clincher" you need to win your music-based argument and put your opponent to shame. Note that your personal opinions about an artist's music do not come into play here: you need to know just as much about artists you hate as the artists you like, as this will give you evidence of inherent lameness that will can be priceless ammunition when you find yourself crossing wits with some poor deluded soul who thinks said crap-merchants have any talent whatsoever.
Don't slack off here! Unlike politicians, hipsters can't afford to fake their way through conversations with made up facts, as the people they talk with are almost always other hipsters, which in turn means that they've got their own repositories of useless musical trivia. If they catch you making things up, you will be subjected to ironic, patronizing derision. Of course, the good news is that if you catch another hipster in a bald-faced lie, you get to pour on the snobbish elitism. One never knows when this could happen, so I suggest you have a stable of appropriate insults ready. For example, "I bet your favorite Radiohead album is Pablo Honey," or "Let me guess: you think the Melvins were ripping off Kurt Cobain."
Part 2: Every artist that nobody's ever heard of
In addition to the time you spend researching known musicians, you should devote several more hours to researching really obscure bands, preferably ones without a label.[9] In the event that one of the new artists makes it big, you will then be allowed to bitch about how they were better before everyone thought they were cool. If someone challenges your "original fanbase" status, you can then rattle off fact after fact, and nobody will doubt that once upon a time you actually cared about those sellouts.
Read the British music press
While NME is not the only British music magazine available, it is the only one that American hipsters care about, so there's not much point in spending your money on anything else.
It's common knowledge among hipsters in the USA that our allies across the pond have a better taste in music than we ever will. After all, they produced such musical giants as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Clash, while we in America have produced dreck like Vanilla Ice, The Backstreet Boys, Creed, and millions of other names that do naught but shame the sensibilities of music lovers everywhere. Fortunately, to correct this imbalance, one has merely to read the NME[10], and then drop the name of any artist spoken of with gushing praise into every conversation possible.
A word of warning: While you should always pay attention to acts that are getting a lot of hype in the British music press, you also need to stay the hell away from the British music sales charts. The reason is simple. While British music reviewers have good taste, the taste of British people who actually buy music is worse than the state of their dental health. These people actually liked "The Ketchup Song"! Enough said?
Become a college radio DJ
This step, while optional, is highly recommended. If hipsterism was Islam, college radio DJs would be the imams: their opinions concerning music are not to be questioned by the masses of lesser adherents to the hipster philosophy. If you say an artist sucks, he or she sucks. Even if that artist happens to be Bruce Springsteen, your opinion takes precedent. On a similar note, if you say an artist has musical merit, then your hipster friends are all obliged to listen to that artist at least once in an un-ironic fashion (unless you direct them to do otherwise), and if they do not listen to said artist, you have the right to pester them incessantly until they do.
However, like Uncle Ben said, "With great power, comes great responsibility — and it corrupts responsibly, too." Though you might think it is humorous to use your position to trick your friends into thinking that artists such as My Chemical Romance, The Pussycat Dolls, or, God forbid, Limp Bizkit are worth their time and money, but you won't be laughing when you see them turn into mindless TRL zombies and have to live with the guilt of knowing that it's all your fault.
The main disadvantage with this strategy for achieving hipster infallibility is that in order to be a college radio DJ, you actually have to get your butt off the couch and go to college. This is not always easy for certain persons in the music aficionado community. If you often engage in amateur botany, your best chance to get a similar status among your fellow hipsters is to either start your own band,[11] or to write music reviews for a reputable publication. And by "reputable," I mean "any publication other than Rolling Stone."[12]
A final note
If you really want to, I suppose you could try to squeeze some time to actually listen to music into your schedule. But between the hours spent researching musical trivia and the hours spent arguing about music with other hipsters, you probably won't have any time.
- ↑ Now that's what I call power!
- ↑ Unless you're a Republican, in which case you aren't allowed to be a hipster.
- ↑ To save on bandwidth, these albums will not be listed here — trust me, such a list would be really freakin' long. Besides, I'd be kicked out of the Eternal Order of Hipsters if I let you in on all of our secrets right away.
- ↑ Note to Kevin Shields: You don't count.
- ↑ If you find yourself in this situation, your best bet is to lie through your teeth.
- ↑ Hey, I said it was a worst-case scenario, right?
- ↑ And in order to prove that they are truly "metal," they will likely as not beat the shit out of you.
- ↑ You didn't really think you'd be allowed to listen to music on anything other than vinyl, did you?
- ↑ For extra credit, ignore any band who already has a MySpace page.
- ↑ New Musical Express, a weekly rock magazine in the UK for nostalgic hippies.
- ↑ But it only counts if said band does not suck monkey anus.
- ↑ Bonus points if it's Pitchfork, but remember that you'll be fired if you so much as hint that any music recording isn't a complete waste of time.
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Apr 29, 2015
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Can travel be more than just a fun thing to do? Could it also provide some benefit and learning experiences later in life? I have always thought this and this is why I have relentlessly travelled the world and now have been to over 80 countries. I have always thought that I was planting the seeds of wisdom while in faraway lands. Through experiences with foreign people, cultures, concepts, and ways of doing things I learned much more than anything I could've done while at home. I interview amazing guests, bestselling authors, scientists, successful business people, dating experts, travel junkies, polyglots (people who speak more than 3 languages), and anybody who I think is interesting for the growth of our listeners and I as people. I think by doing this we can plant the seeds of wisdom which will ultimately lead to our success in career, business, money, relationships, self-worth, and generally being a more well-rounded person. But it requires you to be active making this happen. What do you think?
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• callithumpian •
Pronunciation: kæl-ê-thêm-pee-ên • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Related to a mock serenade made by banging pots and pans together, as in a wedding sendoff. 2. Related to a noisy, discordant band or parade; loud, noisy and discordant.
Notes: Today's Good Word is the adjective accompanying callithump "a noisy, discordant display". In parts of the Midwest a callithump parade is a children's mummer's parade, usually held on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes. This word may, in fact, refer to any noisy party, such as a callithumpian band of New Year's revelers. The adjective may be used as a noun referring to a member of a callithump or callithumpian band.
In Play: This is a word, because of its rare usage, that has a very vague meaning or several meanings. Its basic meaning is a discordant band or parade of revelers: "It was the most callithumpian parade that I have ever seen on the Fourth of July." However, since the meaning is vague at best, we may use it for any group reveling loudly and discordantly: "When they throw a callithumpian party upstairs, you can thump the ceiling with a broomstick handle all you want, but they won't be able to hear it."
Word History: Today's Good Word is probably a fanciful construction originally designating a society of social reformers that disrupted political rallies and elections, gallithumpians by name. This word would seem to be made up of galli "alarming, frightening" + thump + -ian, an adjective suffix. The combining form galli- would be based on dialectal gally "to alarm", as in dialectal gallicrow "scarecrow" and gallinipper "large mosquito". This dialectal variant gally is, no doubt, related to Old English agælwan "to scare", but is not a historical derivation of it. Thump, of course, fits the semantic pattern perfectly. It is an old onomatopoeic (imitative) word with cousins in all the Germanic languages.
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Books of the Week:
- Jane and Prudence, A Few Green Leaves, An Academic Question, An Unsuitable Attachment, Barbara Pym
- The Cat and Bones books by Jeaniene Frost
- Indexing, Seanan McGuire
As you can see, I continued my Barbara Pym binge. There are minor characters who pop up in many of the books, and they are fun to meet over and over; and some of the main characters from a previous book also are glimpsed in later books. Pym is at her funniest and most honest when she reveals peoples' true reactions to the same events. I wonder how she saw the future of her most unlikely couple, Ianthe Broome and John Challow. Pym books are a series of small delights.
The Cat and Bones books are far steamier fare, but they're written with style and verve and an attention to being true to character. Many, many people have enjoyed this series about Catherine, the Red Reaper, and her vampire lover, Bones. I could never stand Cat's mom, Justina, and I've always had issues with her, but the irony of her becoming the thing she hated most – a vampire – and then being such a good one, is not lost on me. From being a damaged child and an endangered teenager, Cat becomes the strongest woman around, which is absolutely satisfying. I'm still reading the earlier books before I read the last one in this excellent series.
Indexing, which Seanan McGuire originally presented chapter by chapter, proved hard for me to get into at first. McGuire is a mistress of world building, but I had only a tenuous grasp of this one in the opening of the book. McGuire gives us a world in which fairy tales come true over and over, where a small task force must keep the narrative contained to avoid the general populace being swept up in the consequences. Or simply to keep it secret? I wasn't sure. The main character, Henrietta (Henry), is a potential Snow White, and her muscle, Sloane, is a potential Evil Stepsister. Like all McGuire books, there are touches of humor and not a little suspense and outright fear, as Henry gets caught up in a place where all the previous Snow Whites are trapped in a snowy wood. Any McGuire is worth reading!
Isabel Allende, originally from Chile and now living in San Francisco, is a bestselling literary author. I know many, many people who admire her intensely, and I am sure this is deserved. By all accounts, she is a great writer. But as far as the mystery community is concerned, she put her foot into her mouth in a major way.
She thought she would write a mystery "as a joke." Though I don't want to put words into Allende's mouth, to me this translates: I'm so amazingly 'literary' that condescending to write a genre novel is incredibly funny.
This is a quote from her NPR interview:
"The book is tongue in cheek. It's very ironic … and I'm not a fan of mysteries, so to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012. … And I realized I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark; there's no redemption there. And the characters are just awful. Bad people. Very entertaining, but really bad people. So I thought, I will take the genre, write a mystery that is faithful to the formula and to what the readers expect, but it is a joke. My sleuth will not be this handsome detective or journalist or policeman or whatever. It will be a young, 16-year-old nerd. My female protagonist will not be this promiscuous, beautiful, dark-haired, thin lady. It will be a plump, blond, healer, and so forth."
There are a lot of factual errors in this statement. There are quite a few mysteries with young protagonists (can you say "Flavia de Luce"?) There are many, many mysteries that do not have promiscuous thin women as protagonists. And most mystery protagonists are NOT bad people. They are driven to solve problems, to seek justice, to right wrongs, to save the innocent. Admittedly, they may do bad things in the course of achieving their goals. But many do not. In limiting herself to bestsellers, Allende left untouched a huge body of work that would have informed her vision more fully: because the mystery genre is ALL about redemption.
Allende's book is Ripper, and before I read the interview, I considered buying it. But having devoted my professional life to genre literature, I don't think I will. So, am I coming down too heavily on Isabel Allende? As a writer who's been misunderstood a lot(!), maybe I should have more tolerance for her poor choice of words. And probably, after a week, I'll just shrug and forget it. After all, it's not like my opinion will make any difference to Isabel Allende. But I still don't think I'll buy the book.
Charlaine Harris


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Burger-and-fries chain Checkers is taking the Big Apple by storm on October 26 and 27 when it shows off its newly available single drive-thru concept on morning show "FOX & Friends."
But Checkers won't just be highlighting its new store design in pictures or words; the brand is actually building out a real restaurant right on the plaza next to the FOX News Channel building, where the brand will do live interviews, serve food to fans, and offer on-site entertainment for passersby.
The 25-year-old brand, known for its iconic double drive-thru design, began crafting the single drive-thru version in 2010 after searching for a way to cut down on the rising cost of development.
Though the chain kept iconic elements like stainless steel, neon lights, and the checkerboard pattern in place, it contemporized the store's look with angular "wings"—coverings over the drive thru and a new patio area—larger-scaled tile for a bolder pattern that's easier to see from a distance, and injections of red in the traditional black-and-white checkerboard pattern.
In early 2011, the brand began searching for a site for its new prototype, and in an unusual move, Checkers decided to place the store directly beside its very first location in Mobile, Alabama.
"We knew if we built a new design [ther] that we would have an opportunity to compare the results of that location to 25 years of history that preceded it," says Jennifer Durham, vice president of development for Checkers/Rally's.
And the comparisons pleased the company. Checkers not only exceeded its original objective to cut costs to less than half a million dollars—not including real estate—but it also cut nearly $200,000 in development costs.
"It's about half of what our competitors currently run to do a building," Durham says. "About $1.1 million is the average in burgers."
The new store design also had some unintended—but positive—results, including increased speed of service, improved guest satisfaction, and higher sales.ed
In fact, Checkers blew sales expectations out of the water. "Before we started this project in 2010, the sales at that location were $770,000 annually," she says. "Now that restaurant is on track to do about $1.2 million this year."
Durham says the most impressive result, however, is that sales haven't tapered off since its grand opening last November. "As more and more people come to know about it and as more of our existing guests visit more frequently, we're seeing higher sales volumes and traffic counts as a result of this change," she says.
At the brand's annual convention in September, the brand announced it would make the prototype available for sale to existing franchisees.
And Checkers is using its upcoming appearance on "FOX & Friends" as a way to tell the world about the prototype, highlight the sales-to-investment ratio, and put a spotlight on the sales the new design has seen.
"We've got a wonderful story to tell not only about the format of the restaurants, but of the success that our franchisees have seen this year and last year in terms of same-store sales," Durham says. The company is already up more than 6 percent this year over 2011, and franchisees are up almost 5 percent.
The "FOX & Friends" event will also expose Checkers to one of its largest untapped markets in the country.
"This opportunity is pretty unique because in New York, we have such low penetration. People don't really know who Checkers and Rally's are," Durham says. "We wanted to create a lot of energy in that market for our existing franchisees that are currently there, as well as restaurateurs who have other concepts that might be looking to grow."
The brand has invited potential franchisees in the New York area who have expressed interest in Checkers in an attempt to engage with them one on one at the event. And it's using food to really hook them, offering free burgers, fries, and Cool Creations throughout the exhibition.
"Food is an emotional thing and very difficult to describe, but once you have it, it really connects with people," Durham says. "Whenever we're looking to bring a new franchisee in, what we do is we make sure that they understand what our concept is all about, and that really starts with the food."
The brand has also reached out to New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.–based franchisees to lend a hand in attracting new operators.
"Nothing speaks better than an existing franchisee to the opportunity when you've got new folks coming in," Durham says.
By Mary Avant


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Tom Cruise Baby Girl's Chinese Astrology |
The Chinese Astrology Birth Chart of Suri Cruise
Suri, the daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, was born on 04/18/2006 around 3:00
a.m. daylight
savings time. The astrology birth hour is around 2:00 a.m. standard time. |
The following 10-God Birth Charts are from Fortune Angel Chinese Astrology software:
Birth Chart in Graphic Symbols |
Birth Chart in Chinese Characters |
Suri was born on the Red Cow day in the Water Dragon month of the Fire Dog Year. The Day Stem represents the person. Therefore, the Female Fire represents Suri. Day Stem is a.k.a. Day Master.
Suri was born in the end of Spring, 18 days before astrology Summer month. The Earth element became stronger on that day. Dog, Cow and Dragon are in the Earth element group, therefore Earth is the strongest element in the birth chart. Fire is the mother element of Earth. Earth can make Female Fire weak. Another Male Fire in the Yearly Column of the birth chart cannot help the Day Master, because Water in the Monthly Column block the way. There is no major Wood, the supporting (mother) element of Day Master, in the birth chart. Therefore Day Master Fire becomes very weak by comparing with Earth, Metal and Water.
When we cannot fight the strong enemy, one way to survive is to surrender. We need to choose enemy as the lucky element. Therefore, the lucky elements are Earth and Metal. Water is unpredictable. Water is the lucky element only when Metal is around and Wood is absent. Wood is the most unlucky element. Fire is not welcome, either.
Chinese astrology is talking about Yin Yang Five Elements. In general, Cow, Sheep, Dog and Dragon are Earth. To be more accurate,
Cow contains Yin Metal, Yin Earth, Yin Water. From the Five Stars theory, we know that
The Five Stars can be distinguished by Yin and Yang, and are derived into 10-God relationships. |
Since the major element of Dog, Dragon and Cow are Earth Fame Star, Suri will be a popular girl and will become famous easily. Earth is something out of Fire (Day Master). Therefore Earth is connected to behavior, thought, speech, outlook and etc. Earth is the lucky element; Suri will be smart and pretty.
Water is strong in the birth chart too. Water is the Career Star. The Male Water appears in the Month Column. Suri should have good Career opportunity before mid-age or marriage.
Water also represents men to Suri. Total of four Water are found in Month, Day and Hour columns. Day Master Fire is surrounded by Water; this means she always has boys around, and will have more than one choice for her marriage. Day Master Female Fire and Male Water in the Month Column have attraction relationship. Male Water is her Husband Star. There is only one Male Water in the birth chart. She will choose the true love for her marriage, even she has to give up the career (Water). Male Water is on the Month Stem, so people can see her love story.
Total of four Female Metal are found in Year, Day and Hour columns. Female Metal is her Windfall Star . Windfall Star is like easy money; people can obtained readily with little or without effort. Metal is her lucky element, Suri was born rich or she will earn money quite easily.
Windfall Star also represents the father of the person. Wood is the mother element of Fire. Only one Female Wood is hidden in the Month column. This tells us that Suri will be closer to her father more than her mother.
Hour | Day | Month | Year | Note | |
Stem | Outside: People can see the fact | ||||
Branch | Inside: Fact is hidden to people | ||||
Note |
Late Age Children |
Middle age Marriage |
Growing Age Parents |
Early Age Whole Family |
Birth Chart Astrology Information |
In Chinese astrology birth chart, Year column is the information about the person's early age. Month column is about the growing age, Day column is the about the middle age and Hour column is about the older age. Stem row is the information about people's outward appearance. Branch row is the real and hidden side of people's life.
The Companion Stars show in the Year column, Suri will have the siblings. The Career/Husband Stars show in the Month column. The marriage shouldn't be late. The Fame and Money Stars are in the Day and Hour columns. She will be a rich woman.
In general, the structure of Suri's Chinese astrology birth chart has a very good shape. Female Metal, Male Water, Dog, Dragon and two Cows are found in the birth chart. Total of lucky symbols are six in the birth chart, which bring her the good foundation of her life.
Suri's Chinese Astrology 10-Year Major Cycles
Chinese astrology birth chart shows people's destiny. Chinese astrology 10-year major cycles reveals people's major fortune. To study people fortune, we always go from lucky elements first.
In short, Five Elements to Suri are
Age | Major Cycle | Stem and Branches | Prediction |
4-13 | Female Metal Rabbit; Rabbit is Wood | Female Metal is Father Star. Wood is Mother Star. She will be closer to
her father in
public, and is close to her mother at home. Female Metal and Male Fire in Year Column have attraction relationship. Rabbit and Dog in Year Column have attraction relationship. Father focuses on kids. Mother is interested in fame. |
14-23 | Male Metal Tiger; Tiger is Wood | Male Metal is Money or Property. Wealth discloses to the public. Tiger contains Fire and Wood. In the year of Horse, Tiger and Dog in the Year Column have strong attraction relationship into Fire. Many friends will come around and money will need to be spent in order to treat them. In the year of Rabbit, Tiger and Dragon in Month Column have strong attraction relationship into Wood. Wood brings either bad reputation or over-protection from parents. | |
24-33 | Female Earth Cow; Cow is Earth | Earth is the Fame Star. Extremely strong Earth will bring in the good reputation in this cycle. | |
34-43 | Male Earth Rat; Rat is Water | Earth is the Fame Star. Rat and Cow in Day Column and Hour Column have attraction relationship into Earth. Fame is still with her. Day Branch is connected to marriage; there will be a good marriage life in this period. | |
44-53 | Female Fire Pig; Pig is Water | Female Fire and Male Water in Month Column have attraction relationship. Female Fire is Friend Star. Male Water is Husband Star. It might be another female involved into marriage. Pig is Water, which is Husband Star or Career Star. There are four Earth animals in the birth chart. Water and Earth are opposite elements. That means it's not smooth in the career or marriage relationship. | |
54-63 | Male Fire Dog; Dog is Earth | Male Fire and Female Metal in the Hour Column have attraction relationship. Male Fire is related to friends, siblings or relatives. Female Metal is money. That means that someone will appear for money and bring trouble in this period. Dog is the Fame Star. The popularity is still there. |
The birth char has two Actor Stars and Artist Stars. Actor Star might bring her into movies career. Artist Star might move her career behind the stage from age 44 cycle. Usually, a person has a kind heart with strong Artist Star. She might get this from the father.
The most important thing to a man in his life is the Career. To woman, marriage is the most important thing to her life.
A woman with strong Fame Star with Money Star has trouble to find the true love. Fame Star can help people to generate more income. A rich woman is hard to find the equal man. Many strong Fame Star women have difficult to control their emotion in public. A woman with strong Actor Star doesn't fear men at all. If a man loses his respect from a woman, then the marriage won't last to long. For example, because strong Earth is the Fame Star and Water is the Husband Star, Earth can make Water disappear.
Suri's Day Master Female Fire and Husband Star Male Water in Month Column have attraction relationship. She is quite lucky that a man who can get along well with her is around. However, she only has to pay attention on marriage in the age 44-53 cycle.
For the Favorable (Lucky) Elements in Major Cycles Chart, we can see the best of 20 years is from age 24 to age 43. Age 44 to 53, the blue bar is lower, but the luck will come back after this period.
Not much Wood shows up in Suri's birth chart. No major wood can be found in the Major Cycle from age 24 to 63. So wood is weak during these periods. Wood is connected to the liver. If Suri works too hard for her career or business during this time, then her liver or eyes might be jeopardized. Keeping a happy mood will help the function of the liver.
The predictions here are only from the Major Cycles. The ending result for each events might be changed by the factor of Stem and Branch from the Yearly Cycles. In the other words, Chinese astrology can predict that the Five Element related events will happen. But without studying the Yearly Cycle, we won't know the ending result. Without studying the Monthly and Daily Cycles, we won't know when the events will start and stop.
All Chinese astrology prediction here is for entertainment purpose only.
Find your Chinese Astrology Rise and Fall Chart Free
The Birth Chart of The First Daughter of Tiger Woods
The Birth Chart of The First Son of Britney Spears
Home of Celebrity Chinese Astrology
Chinese Fortune Angel software tells your lucky
elements and animals


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Chapter VII.—Further Examples from the Old Testament in Favour of Fasting.
And thus we have already proceeded to examples, in order that, by its profitable efficacy, we may unfold the powers of this duty which reconciles God, even when angered, to man.
Israel, before their gathering together by Samuel on occasion of the drawing of water at Mizpeh, had sinned; but so immediately do they wash away the sin by a fast, that the peril of battle is dispersed by them simultaneously (with the water on the ground). At the very moment when Samuel was offering the holocaust (in no way do we learn that the clemency of God was more procured than by the abstinence of the people), and the aliens were advancing to battle, then and there "the Lord thundered with a mighty voice upon the aliens, and they were thrown into confusion, and fell in a mass in the sight of Israel; and the men of Israel went forth out of Mizpeh, and pursued the aliens, and smote them unto Bethor,"—the unfed (chasing) the fed, the unarmed the armed. Such will be the strength of them who "fast to God."10501050 See Zech. vii. 5. For such, Heaven fights. You have (before you) a condition upon which (divine) defence will be granted, necessary even to spiritual wars.
Similarly, when the king of the Assyrians, Sennacherib, after already taking several cities, was volleying blasphemies and menaces against Israel through Rabshakeh, nothing else (but fasting) diverted him from his purpose, and sent him into the Ethiopias. After that, what else swept away by the hand of the angel an hundred eighty and four thousand from his army than Hezekiah the king's humiliation? if it is true, (as it is), that on hearing the announcement of the harshness of the foe, he rent his garment, put on sackcloth, and bade the elders of the priests, similarly habited, approach God through Isaiah—fasting being, of course, the escorting attendant of their prayers.10511051 See 2 Kings xviii.; xix.; 2 Chron. xxxii.; Isa. xxxvi.; xxxvii. For peril has no time for food, nor sackcloth any care for satiety's refinements. Hunger is ever the attendant of mourning, just as gladness is an accessory of fulness.
Through this attendant of mourning, and (this) hunger, even that sinful state, Nineveh, is freed from the predicted ruin. For repentance for sins had sufficiently commended the fast, keeping it up in a space of three days, starving out even the cattle with which God was not angry.10521052 See Jonah iii. Comp. de Pa., c. x. Sodom also, and Gomorrah, would have escaped if they had fasted.10531053 See Ezek. xvi. 49; Matt. xi. 23, 24; Luke x. 12–14. This remedy even Ahab acknowledges. When, after his transgression and idolatry, and the slaughter of Naboth, slain by Jezebel on account of his vineyard, Elijah had upbraided him, "How hast thou killed, and possessed the inheritance? In the place where dogs had licked up the blood of Naboth, thine also shall they lick up,"—he "abandoned himself, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and slept in sackcloth. And then (came) the word of the Lord unto Elijah, Thou hast seen how Ahab hath shrunk in awe from my face: for that he hath shrunk in awe I will not bring the hurt upon (him) in his own days; but in the days of his son I will bring it upon (him)"—(his son), who was not to fast.10541054 See 1 Kings xxi. (in the LXX. it is 3 Kings xx.). Thus a God-ward fast is a work of reverential awe: and by its means also Hannah the wife of Elkanah making suit, barren as she had been beforetime, easily obtained from God the filling of her belly, empty of food, with a son, ay, and a prophet.10551055 See 1 Sam. i. 1, 2, 7–20; iii. 20 (in LXX. 1 Kings).
Nor is it merely change of nature, or aversion of perils, or obliteration of sins, but likewise the recognition of mysteries, which fasts will merit from God. Look at Daniel's example. About the dream of the King of Babylon all the sophists are troubled: they affirm that, without external aid, it cannot be discovered by human skill. Daniel alone, trusting to God, and knowing what would tend to the deserving of God's favour, requires a space of three days, fasts with his fraternity, and—his prayers thus commended—is instructed throughout as to the order and signification of the dream; quarter is granted to the tyrant's sophists; God is glorified; Daniel is honoured; destined as he was to receive, even subsequently also, no less a favour of God in the first year, of King Darius, when, after care107ful and repeated meditation upon the times predicted by Jeremiah, he set his face to God in fasts, and sackcloth, and ashes. For the angel, withal, sent to him, immediately professed this to be the cause of the Divine approbation: "I am come," he said, "to demonstrate to thee, since thou art pitiable"10561056 Dan. ix. 23; x. 11.—by fasting, to wit. If to God he was "pitiable," to the lions in the den he was formidable, where, six days fasting, he had breakfast provided him by an angel.10571057 See Bel and the Dragon (in LXX.) vers. 31–39. "Pitiable" appears to be Tertullian's rendering of what in the E.V. is rendered "greatly beloved." Rig. (in Oehler) renders: "of how great compassion thou hast attained the favour;" but surely that overlooks the fact that the Latin is "miserabilis es," not "sis."
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text:
Irving, TX (SportsNetwork.com) - Former Walter Payton Award winners Michael Payton of Marshall and Archie Amerson of Northern Arizona are part of the 2014 ballot for induction into the College Football Hall of Fame, the National Football Foundation announced Thursday.
The ballot includes 75 players and six coaches from the FBS level and 87 players and 26 coaches from the divisional ranks, which includes the FCS. There are 38 former FCS players and six former FCS head coaches on the list.
The ballot was sent to the more than 12,000 NFF members and current Hall of Famers whose votes will be tabulated and submitted to the NFF's 17-member Honors Court, which deliberates and selects the class.
"It's an enormous honor to just be on the ballot when you think that more than 4.99 million people have played college football," NFF president and CEO Steven J. Hatchell said. "The Hall's requirement of being a First-Team All- American creates a much smaller pool of only 1,500 individuals who are even eligible to be on the ballot, so being in today's elite group means an individual is truly among the greatest to ever have played the game, and we are proud to announce their names."
Payton, a quarterback, won the 1992 Payton Award, while Amerson, a running back, was voted as the outstanding player in the FCS (formerly Division I-AA) in 1996.
Former Appalachian State coach Jerry Moore and former Youngstown State coach Jim Tressel, who both won multiple FCS national titles and an Eddie Robinson Award as national coach of the year, also are on the ballot.
The 2014 Hall of Fame class will be announced in May and its members will be inducted at the 57th NFF Annual Awards Dinner Dec. 9 in New York. The inductees will be enshrined in the new College Football Hall of Fame at a date to be determined next year. The new Hall, currently under construction, is scheduled to open in Atlanta before the 2014 college football season.
Former FCS players on the ballot:
Archie Amerson, RB, Northern Arizona
Rennie Benn, WR, Lehigh
Carl Boyd, RB, Northern Iowa
Joe Campbell, RB, Middle Tennessee State
Bruce Collie, OT, Texas-Arlington
Case deBruijn, P, Idaho State-Punter
John Dorsey, LB, Connecticut
Tom Ehrhardt, QB, Rhode Island
Curtis Eller, LB, Villanova
Richard Erenberg, RB, Colgate
Don Griffin, S, Middle Tennessee State
Don Hass, HB, Montana State
Conway Hayman, OG, Delaware
John Hill, C, Lehigh
John Huard, LB, Maine
Rene Ingoglia, RB, Massachusetts
Garry Kuhlman, OT, Delaware
Steve McAdoo, OL, Middle Tennessee State
Bill McGovern, DB, Holy Cross-Defensive Back
Robert Morris, DE, Georgetown
John Ogles, FB, Austin Peay State
Chris Parker, RB, Marshall
Michael Payton, QB, Marshall
Martin Peterson, OT, Penn
Charlie Pierce, P/PK, Central Florida
Michael Renna, DE, Delaware
Kirk Roach, PK, Western Carolina
Terry Schmidt, DB, Ball State
Larry Schreiber, RB, Tennessee Tech
Steve Schubert, WR, Massachusetts
Joe Skladany, LB, Lafayette
Leonard Smith, CB, McNeese State
Tom Stenglein, WR, Colgate
Freddie Thomas, DB, Troy (formerly Troy State)
Markus Thomas, TB, Eastern Kentucky
Billy Thompson, DB, Maryland Eastern Shore
Lee White, FB, Weber State
John Zanieski, DL, Yale
Former FCS head coaches on the ballot:
Bill Bowes, New Hampshire (1972-98)
Jim Feix, Western Kentucky (1968-83)
Rudy Hubbard, Florida A&M (1974-85)
Jerry Moore, North Texas (1979-80), Texas Tech (1981-85), Appalachian State (1989-2012)
Jim Tressel, Youngstown State (1986-2000), Ohio State (2001-2010)
John Whitehead, Lehigh (1976-86)


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I dedicate this comic to Paul, who seems to actually enjoy this stupid-ass show.
Here's a handy map that I made so that you can easily locate your favorite webcomics artists on Indie Island.
Also, TODAY IS MY FREAKING BIRTHDAY!!! I am 29 years old for the first time ever!
If you are a Fancy Bastard living in NC:
1) COME TO THE CON 2) TELL ME HAPPY BIRTHDAY 3) BUY SOMETHING (from me)* 4) TELL ME HAPPY BIRTHDAY AGAIN 5) Repeat until one of us passes out
*in lieu of buying something you may also just give me cash, a present or a home made desert item. I'm not picky.
If you are not in NC, then why not drop a b-day donation in the e-tip jar, or pick up some lovely geek swag from the HE Store? That would be like a present for me AND YOU! A happy birthday memory we can share.
If you choose not to do any of these things then maybe tell a friend about HE, or share a happy birthday wish via Twitter.
I really wish I could show you what Josh made me for my birthday, but I think you're going to have to wait for HE book 2 to see it. I hope to start preorders on that this summer.
Science Fiction TV-Movie Title Generator T-Shirt @Topatoco!!!
There is also a PRINT of this design too!


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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says her nomination process was so tightly scripted that even her clothes were chosen for her.
Sotomayor made the comments when she appeared at her 30th Yale Law School reunion on Saturday.
The New Haven Register reports that Sotomayor spoke to 1,800 alumni, students and faculty, describing her recent grueling nomination process.
State Sen. Ed Meyer was among those in attendance. He says Sotomayor became teary at times but kept the crowd laughing. He says Sotomayor talked about shopping for clothes to wear to her acceptance ceremony. Government officials, however, told her to bring five suits and they recommended which one she should wear.
Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, attended a luncheon, coffee reception and a 30th reunion dinner with about 50 guests.


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European Union leaders took a step forward on the path toward a banking union at their latest summit, but they delayed more politically fraught decisions until the next meeting.
After a late night discussion in Brussels Thursday, EU leaders committed to a Jan. 1 deadline to hammer out details for a Single Supervisory Mechanism for eurozone banks, which they said will be implemented some time next year.
The legislation would give the European Central Bank the ability to oversee the region's roughly 6,000 banks, in addition to its existing mandate to manage interest rates and contain inflation.
Establishing the single supervisor is a prerequisite for the ultimate goal of recapitalizing banks in the euro area with bailout funds from the European Stability Mechanism.
In theory, the ESM would be able to inject capital directly into banks without driving governments deeper into debt.
This is particularly important for Spain, which has already requested up to €100 billion to help fill the €59 billion hole left in the nation's banking sector by a major property bust.
Related: Wall Street still spooked by Spain
Ireland, where the government was bailed out in 2010, after assuming much of the nation's bank debt, also stands to benefit.
But there are many thorny questions that need to be resolved before the legislation can be written into law, let alone implemented.
For one, the ECB is a eurozone institution, and it remains unclear whether it will have authority over banks in EU nations that do not use the single currency. Britain, in particular, is uncomfortable with this idea.
In a statement, EU leaders stressed the need for a "single rulebook."
There is also the question of so-called legacy assets. Officials from Germany, Finland and Denmark suggested last month that bailout funds should only be used to repay future bank debt, rather than resolve existing banking problems.
What's more, Germany and other EU nations appear to be at odds over the scope of the supervisor's authority. Berlin reportedly wants the supervisor to focus only on "systemically important" banks, as opposed to the smaller institutions that hold much of the bad debt in the eurozone.
"There are still major obstacles on the path to full banking union in the eurozone," said Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics.
Beyond the banking union, EU leaders pledged to continue working on more integrated budget policies, as well as steps to boost economic growth and create jobs.
Related: Spain's precarious future
Eurozone leaders welcomed the progress Greece has made in talks with international creditors, saying Friday that finance ministers will make a decision on additional rescue funds for Greece once that nation's lender have completed their review.
But the lack of progress on these issues has raised the stakes for the next EU summit in December, according to Fitch Ratings.
Fitch said prolonged delays on structural reforms "could damage the credibility of policy makers' efforts to solve the eurozone crisis and increase the eurozones' vulnerability to market pressure."
Still, the agency said a short delay would be manageable thanks to the ECB's recent commitment to buy potentially unlimited amounts of sovereign debt, a move that has calmed the markets since September.
Spain, in particular, has benefited from the promise of ECB intervention in the bond market, where yields on the 10-year bond have moved closer to 5% from the lofty 7% levels seen in July. It also remains to be seen if the Spanish government would agree to the ECB's conditions, which include committing to a formal bailout program.
"The ECB continues to hold the fort," said Nicholas Spiro, director of London-based consultancy Spiro Sovereign Strategy. "But the eurozone crisis has entered a more political phase in which the future of the single currency area hinges on far-reaching institutional reforms."


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The notion that Scottish public services are subsidised by English taxpayers has become so commonplace in UK politics that not even David Dimbleby, the supposedly neutral presenter of BBC Question Time, thinks twice about repeating it. During an exchange on a recent show with Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson about her decision to vote as a Scottish MP to impose tuition fees on English students, Dimbleby said, "You voted for England to have fees, whereas Scotland, as we know, with the amount of money that comes from England, doesn't need to have them."
This view is based on the discrepancy between levels of public spending per head of the population in Scotland and England. According to the Treasury's latest Public Expenditure Statistics, Scots gets an average of £10,212 spent on them every year by the UK government, compared with around £8,588 — £1,624 less — for people in England.
In line with narrative of the Scottish welfare subsidy, the extra cash allows Scotland to provide its students with free higher education, its elderly with free personal care and concessionary travel, and its sick with free prescription medication, while their English equivalents are forced to go without.
This so-called "Union dividend" is also used by many London-based journalists and politicians — many of whom would describe themselves as social democrats — who argue that current levels of public expenditure in Scotland would be unsustainable were it to break away and become an independent country.
Yet, if the London commentariat took the time to examine the figures a little more closely, they would discover what a large number people north of the border already know: not only does Scotland more than pay its way in the Union, but its overall fiscal position would actually be stronger as a fully sovereign nation.
Let's tackle the subsidy charge first. Scots represent 8.4 per cent of the UK's total population, but they generate 9.4 per cent of its annual revenues in tax — equivalent to £1,000 extra per person. The remaining £624 is easily accounted for by decades of UK government under-spending in Scotland on defence and on other items which are not routinely broken down by region, such as foreign office services.
Second, there's the claim that Scotland's "bloated" welfare state could not be sustained outside the Union. This is nonsense. Including its per capita share of revenues from North Sea oil and gas production, Scotland's public expenditure probably does not exceed the OECD average and is almost certainly lower than that of the Scandinavian social democracies. The fact that the Treasury cynically refuses to class those revenues as part of Scotland's overall annual economic output inflates the level of public sector expenditure as a proportion of GDP relative to that of the private sector.
Finally, one of the most common — and least well-considered — claims made by supporters of the Union is that the 2008 global financial meltdown shattered the economic case for independence. How, they argue, would the economy of tiny, independent Scotland have been able to cope with the burden of debt needed to rescue its financial sector from collapse? It wouldn't, of course, but according to George Walker, professor of financial regulation and policy at the University of Glasgow, Scotland would only have had to take on a proportion of the total cost of the bail-out based on the subsidiaries and business operations of HBOS and RBS in Scotland. This would probably amount to no more than 5 per cent.
For the sake of argument, nationalists might also wish to note that Scotland's 2009 – 2010 deficit was, at 6.8 per cent of GDP, a full 3 per cent lower than England's, and that the likely defence expenditure of an independent Scotland would, at around $1.8bn per year in line with Nordic average, be roughly £1bn less than what the UK currently spends on its behalf.
But why should Unionists let the economic facts ruin the image they have built up of Scotland as a nation of selfish, indulged welfare "mendicants"?The subsidy myth is too politically useful to be simply abandoned. Of course, if they ever do come to terms with the reality that Scotland could survive on its own – and even prosper – it will probably be too late anyway.


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Thoughts on Language Learning
I went to a good private school (Kinkaid in Houston, if anyone knows it). I didn't really know how good it was until I went to an Ivy League college and found I was ahead of most of the other students in most every subject. The thing I thank Kinkaid for more than anything is that we had to write -- and write, and write. Every test was an essay test. By the time I was 18, I could write a well-organized and reasonably coherent (but not well-proofed, as readers will know!) five paragraph persuasive essay in my sleep. (My ability to communicate was not really advanced at all in college, and I only began to learn more about persuasive, organized communication when I joined McKinsey & Co. and was taught the pyramid principle).
Anyway, that is all background to my one gripe about primary school -- I hated language learning. Hated it. I took Spanish from Kindergarten through the 11th grade, but counted the years and months and days to when I could quit. From when I was 18 until I was about 45, I never had any desire to learn another word of any language again.
But about 10 years ago I picked up a Pimsleur language course (Italian, I think) and I loved it. Knowing some Italian really enhanced my trip to Italy. From there on, I have been studying a number of languages.
I want to pause for a minute and reflect on why I hated language learning so much in school but like it now. It could just be a function of age -- I was bored stiff plowing through Les Miserables in high school but re-read it as an adult and loved it. But I think there is a bigger problem: I think schools suck at teaching languages. My kids, who generally love learning and are good at school, hated language class. My guess is that people just want to be able to converse, which is what courses like Pimsleur are geared towards. When I go to Florence, I want to be able to order dinner in Italian and talk to the shopkeepers. But in high school we seemed to spend a lot of time learning two (!) forms of the pluperfect subjunctive in Spanish. Great for the AP, but my guess is that the bartender in Barcelona is going to give you a pass for messing up the subjunctive. "If I were to have a beer, how much would it have cost me yesterday and how much might if have cost if I had come tomorrow instead?"
So I have taken about 60 hours each of Italian, Spanish, German, and Mandarin. I seem to be able to remember them all in deep memory but I can only hold one other language in my short-term, immediately-available recall buffer. So I have to do 5-6 hours of one of these again before I go to the country to shift that language into the top of the memory heap.
I like the Pimsleur approach, which is pure auditory (which matches how I learn, I have a much higher ability to remember what I hear than what I read). The courses use an approach called spaced repetition that works well for me, and must work for others given that these courses, which are pretty old and predate all the new Internet tools, are still quite popular. The one oddity about them is that they almost never explain any points of grammar. For example, they really don't explain the rules of verb conjugation. You are expected to figure out the rules as you go based on the examples -- essentially you back into the rules based on use. This works pretty well, though certain situations can drive English speakers crazy. For example, we are not used to having a command form of verb conjugations, as Spanish and Italian have, so I have seen folks get confused for a while when the verb in "You can come with me" and "Come with me" are conjugated differently. At some point one needs more structure for grammar, which means I almost always buy a basic grammar book and one of those 501 verb conjugation books for each language I do on Pimsleur.
People always ask me which languages were easiest and hardest. The answer is that it depends. Each have hard and easy parts. Here are a few thoughts on each (all from an English-speaker's perspective):
- Spanish and Italian are incredibly similar, so similar it can be confusing knowing both, as I forget exactly which word is which when their words for something are very similar. Both have a lot of borrow words in common with English and have sentence structures and word order reasonably similar to English (except for having adjectives follow rather than precede nouns). Like other romance languages, they have gendered nouns which are unfamiliar to English speakers and generally I find gendered nouns add complexity without any really gain in meaning. I consider both Spanish and Italian to be easy languages for an English speaker to learn. In terms of which of the two is easiest, I have studied Spanish since I was 4 so I can't really be unbiased here, and they are similar in many ways. Spanish plurals are more natural to English speakers, and I think management of adjectives with the genders is a bit easier and it seems to be more regular. Italian verb tenses are a bit easier, without as much complexity in past tenses as there are in Spanish. Overall, though, both are fun and easy to learn.
- German is a mixed bag but was generally a lot harder for me to learn. If you hate the two genders in Romance languages, you are going to love having three (!) in German. German has pretty rigid rules about sentence order which in many cases will be unnatural to English speakers. For example, there are certain types of sentences where the verb goes at the very end, after everything else (something Mark Twain made fun of). When you have a list of adverbs or prepositional phrases in a sentence, there is a correct order for them (e.g. time before place). In English we would consider "I ate in the kitchen in the morning" and "I ate in the morning in the kitchen" to be equally OK but not so in German. The articles and possessive pronouns not only have different forms based on the 3 genders of the noun, but there are different forms if the noun is in different parts of a sentence, eg the direct or indirect object. I found myself having to diagram each sentence and plan it out in my head before I let it come out of my mouth. I can say a fair amount in German, but it never became natural. The good news about German is that pronunciation is very regular, though there are a few sounds you have to learn to make that we don't have in English. There are a ton of borrow words, so a lot of vocabulary comes easily. And verb conjugation is pretty straightforwards, with what seems to be fewer cases in use than in, say, Spanish (never learned a future tense and no special command tense, though I suppose one could be snarky and say all German verbs are in command form.)
- Mandarin is a mixed bag but it may surprise English speakers that it is easy in some ways. First the hard parts: Speaking it is really hard for a westerner, as every sound has at least four possible tones, plus variations such as falling and rising. I am a terrible singer and believe I would have done much better at Mandarin if I were good at music, since the hitting the tones right felt a lot like singing to me. The other hard part about Mandarin is the almost complete and total lack of borrow words. Every single word is new and unfamiliar. But there are aspects that are surprisingly easy, such as basic grammar. There are no gendered nouns, there are really no plurals, and within a tense there seems to be no very conjugation -- For example the form of "to be" for I, you, she, they are all the single same word. Many things from numbers to prepositions are very logical, in some ways almost like it was designed by a group of scientists. Past tenses are also surprisingly easy to form. There are a few quirks, like special count words -- it is not just one beer, but one count of beer, and the word for "count" changes whether you are counting beers or people or something else. But all in all, a very easy language to learn -- if it were not such a royal pain in the butt to pronounce for westerners.
By the way, I find that being able to speak the languages has different value depending on the language. People in Italy and Spanish-speaking countries are just absurdly delighted if you can speak any of their language -- there is a big payback in goodwill. Also, it is far easier in Italy or Latin American (than, say, in Germany) to find oneself in a place where no one speaks English. In Germany, the homeless people speak better English than my German. When I insisted on trying to use German, the Germans were generally willing to let me try but you could just see their impatience, knowing they could have finished the exchange two minutes earlier in English. Mandarin turned out to be a virtual non-starter. I just did not have enough experience conversing with natives to be comprehensible. Also, it was easy to run into many other dialects, or other languages like Cantonese. Others have reported that many Chinese hate when Westerners try to speak Mandarin and will pretend not to understand it -- I can't confirm or deny this, though my Chinese exchange student loves it when I try to speak Mandarin.
Postscript: Mark Twain on German:
A dog is "der Hund"; a woman is "die Frau"; a horse is "das Pferd"; now you put that dog in the genitive case, and is he the same dog he was before? No, sir; he is "des Hundes"; put him in the dative case and what is he? Why, he is "dem Hund." Now you snatch him into the accusative case and how is it with him? Why, he is "den Hunden." But suppose he happens to be twins and you have to pluralize him- what then? Why, they'll swat that twin dog around through the 4 cases until he'll think he's an entire international dog-show all in is own person. I don't like dogs, but I wouldn't treat a dog like that- I wouldn't even treat a borrowed dog that way. Well, it's just the same with a cat. They start her in at the nominative singular in good health and fair to look upon, and they sweat her through all the 4 cases and the 16 the's and when she limps out through the accusative plural you wouldn't recognize her for the same being. Yes, sir, once the German language gets hold of a cat, it's goodbye cat. That's about the amount of it.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
Much more here. I would swear I saw a quote from Twain that said he had read a whole book in German but did not know what was happening until he got to all the verbs on the last page, but I can't find the quote.


text: OC Elementary School Students Show Off Their Apple For Apple Day Oct 04,2011 by DispatchAdmin Students B62 Ocean City Elementary School kindergarten students Kayla Rocco and Trevor Junta show their apples for Apple Day. Students used the apples throughout the day's lessons as they read about the seasons of an apple tree. ← Previous Next →


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[fjordcarver] was looking for some mercury-free tilt switches that wouldn't break the bank and that were easy to build. He also wanted something cheap, so instead of buying some tilt switches he devised his own that fit all of the criteria he set out. Now, these switches are not your typical fare, and they're not small either. They are however, cheap, effective, and easy to manipulate/repair.
He picked up a package of metallic craft beads at the store and emptied out two bottles, saving one set of beads that happened to be conductive, i.e. not coated with paint or coloring. The beads were split between two jars, which were then sealed with corks that had a pair of straightened paperclips inserted through them. The bottles were oriented facing away from one another, then attached together with a piece of house wire. One of the leads from each jar was attached to this common wire, while the others were extended with hook up wire for use in the circuit he was building. Pictures definitely explain the mechanism far better than words can, so be sure to check out his tutorial to get a better look at them.
While they might look a bit rough, he says they work great, so give them a try if you have the need.


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NEW YORK, USA: Facebook, the social networking site, is probably not the first place that comes to mind when contemplating new career opportunities.
"People are spending so much of their time on Facebook and at the same time companies are trying to find creative and productive tools to connect with potential talent," said Tom Chevalier, global product manager for Monster Worldwide.
With BeKnown jobs are displayed based on a user's work experience and network connections. When the app identifies a potential job the user can state their interest, which is relayed to the employer using information from the profile.
Within the app users can earn badges, or visual emblems, based on their work experiences, accomplishments and strengths from the site or from colleagues to serve as aids for recruiters to highlight their accomplishments.
"You can have your connections giving you a skill endorsement, which is really a stamp of approval," said Chevalier.
Launched in June, the app has been updated to introduce college pages for users to network with past alumni and to find jobs that have been posted by them.
"Users want to congregate around the affinity they have for their schools, and they want to form relationships amongst students and alumni," said Chevalier.
When a job is posted in BeKnown it is automatically posted on the page of the college that the job poster attended.
"Users will see that job opportunity, know what year the poster graduated, and can start to have a conversation with those people in a professional way," he said.
Chevalier said that it's important that BeKnown maintain an explicit divide between a user's social and professional lives by keeping the two networks entirely separate.
"That's really important, both for users' expectations of social networking versus what they might want to do as professionals, but also to establish boundaries that people can feel comfortable with," he explained.
The updated app also lists jobs directly on a company's Facebook pages. Similar apps for Facebook include BranchOut, which was released last year.
BeKnown has been configured to work with iPhone and Android.


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Praise be to Allah.
A: In Arabic, Islam means surrender . It has been taken to describe the status of the one who embraces Allah's Religion for he surrenders his will to Allah and abide by the rules set by Him and conveyed via His Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. Allah says about Ibrahim, peace be upon him, "When his Lord said to him, "Submit (be a Muslim )!" He said, "I have submitted myself (as a Muslim ) to the Lord of all that exists. " [al-Baqarah 2:131 – interpretation of the meaning] .
The Standing Committee